The protevangel or mother promise of Genesis 3:15 is declared in words that give it a strange sound. So strange is this sound that it may be hard to understand how the protevangel is indeed the gospel. It may be even harder to understand how it can be so pivotal as to be the first proclamation of the gospel.

How can this word of enmity actually be a word of friendship, a covenant word? How can it be a gospel promise, let alone the first gospel promise? It speaks not of friendship or of salvation but of enmity. It speaks not of freedom but of warfare. It declares not healing or restoration but violence and death.

From the viewpoint of speech, it is simple enough to explain why this is the case. Although our first parents were present to hear this protevangel, the Lord God did not speak it directly to them. He addressed these words directly to Satan, the deceiver and tempter. The Lord promised to put enmity between Satan and the woman and between his seed and her seed. God promised that the seed of the woman would bruise the head of the serpent, while the serpent would bruise the heel of the woman’s seed.

With that understanding in mind, it is simple enough to understand why this mother promise is expressed in its particular words. God pronounced wrath and judgment against his bitter foe for what he had done in marring God’s good creation. Satan had wickedly disrupted the fellowship that God had with his creatures, those created in the height of glory in his very image and likeness. Satan had turned the friend-servants of God into enemies.

Even with the above understanding, we might still be puzzled by the form of the words of the first promise of the gospel. We might think the precious note of the gospel would have been pronounced much more clearly if the Lord God had spoken to our first parents rather than to Satan, if God had spoken simple words of reclamation, asserting that he would continue being their friend-sovereign and that he would in wondrous grace repair the breach they had created and raise them out of their desolation and death, making them his friends again.

But the Lord God did not. He spoke what he did and to whom he did. He spoke these words recorded in holy scripture for an important reason. That reason is the antithesis.

The word antithesis is from the Greek language and is made up of a main word and a prefix. The main word is thesis. Its counterpart in the English language is the word stand. Attached to this main word is the prefix anti, which has the English counterpart against or contrary to. The antithesis, then, is a stand against. To be antithetical is to take a stand against something else. Thus the antithesis is the necessary implication of the word “enmity” in Genesis 3:15. The mother promise makes the antithesis the gracious promise and work of God.

The word antithesis calls our attention first to the thesis. That thesis is the radical effect of the fall. The serpent had his stand against his sovereign creator. Through Satan’s temptation he gained the willing participation of our first parents in his stand against God. Together they stood shoulder to shoulder, arm in arm, against the living God. Such is the condition of the fallen world by nature. That condition is a clear, decisive, unrelenting stand against the sovereign God of heaven and earth. The thesis of sin is all there is by nature. It runs through all human society and culture. The thesis is the development of the world in its politics, its society and community, and its art, culture, and technological progress. The thesis must develop to its climax in the kingdom of antichrist.

In the middle of that thesis, the God of grace instituted the antithesis. By his word and Spirit, he works another stand, a stand against the current and trend of the thesis of Satan and fallen mankind.

According to the promise of Genesis 3:15, the antithesis is all of God. His word of promise begins with the word “I.” The Lord God, the speaker of the promise, declares himself to be the source of the antithesis. Additionally, the promise is from God alone. His word alone declares that establishing enmity will be his work alone. He makes no plea. He attempts to strike no bargain. He gives no invitation. The reason? Quite simply, the thesis cannot at all become the antithesis. Of itself the stand against God cannot become a stand for God.

Such is an additional benefit to the understanding that God did not address this word directly to our first parents but to Satan.

Also this promise of the antithesis does not allow the seed of the woman to be a party over against the God of the antithesis. The antithesis allows only one party, the party of the God of the antithesis. There is only one anti-stand, not two anti-stands, or two antitheses. God’s covenant word of promise gives no independent place to man, the seed of the woman. The glorious power of the promise is that it rescues man from his alliance with the serpent and his seed. That rescue does not leave him in an independent position. He is not to be a party by himself. The power of the promise is that it takes man back to the very God to whom he had belonged. It joins man back to his God in redeeming grace, with the result that man becomes of the party of the living God. The power of the promise is that, in covenant fellowship, God and man stand in alliance against the seed of the serpent.

The above becomes crystal clear when we consider that the heart of the covenant promise of Genesis 3:15 does not refer to our first parents. The promise was given to them and belongs to them. Such was the power of the promise that they were redeemed back to be with their God in his antithesis. But the heart of the promise is the seed of the woman. That seed is Christ first, and then the elect in Christ (Gal. 3:16). The seed of the woman is the Son of God. It is not only the Son of God who would become incarnate and whose death on the cross would be the bruising of the serpent’s head. But it is also the Son of God who was personally given to our first parents by God’s mother promise.

In the Son of God alone is the entire and complete antithesis to the seed of the serpent. He is the Word that God spoke to our first parents. In that mother promise, God gave himself in the person of the Son to be the savior of all the seed of the woman, the children of promise. With his antithetical word giving his Son, Jehovah God brought Adam and Eve back into saving covenant fellowship with himself. In that salvation they became his, of his redeemed people and of his party. By his Word and in his Word, they were joined to him to stand together against sin and Satan, never apart and never over against each other.

This antithesis must stand, according to the mother promise of Genesis 3:15, as a dominant feature of all subsequent covenant history. In all the development of sacred history and covenant history, the antithesis looms large. The kingdom of God comes through conquest. The church on earth is always a militant church. Through judgment God redeems his Zion. The gospel is a savor of life unto life and of death unto death, always declaring salvation to God’s people and judgment to the wicked. The Christian is called to put on the whole armor of God, and he must constantly wear that armor until the day of his death. He is called always to wield the sword of the word of God and must not lay down his arms until he gains the final victory in the glory of heaven.

The antithesis occupies the same prominence from the viewpoint of the seed of the serpent as well. Scripture draws back the veil to reveal a world that is dominated by the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now works in the children of disobedience (Eph. 2:2). The world, under the dominion of Satan, is desperately bent on the ruin of the church, the cause of God in the world. As the church bears witness to God’s truth in the world, the seed of the woman comes under incessant attack.

Sometimes that attack is overt. The world persecutes the church, the party of God. The false church persecutes the true. Heresies threaten the church that holds fast to the truth. False teachers and promoters of licentiousness arise from within. The way of God’s covenant people is made harsh and severe. Tribulation and oppression grow strong, and compromise is presented as the way of relief. How easy life would be if Christianity were not so exclusive! So the seed of the serpent tries to separate God’s people from their God.

Sometimes that attack is far different, subversive in character. Sometimes the seed of the serpent dresses in the guise of the seed of the woman. Goodness and grace are all around, not only in the church. The world participates in the gift of redemption, though to a far lesser degree. The church and the world have much in common that they can enjoy and treasure in this present life. At other times the seed of the serpent entices with its own overtures of friendship and fellowship. Why be lonely? Why be so few? Why not take our daughters for your sons? Why not give your daughters to our sons? There is so much to share and enjoy together! So the seed of the serpent tries to steal away the hearts of God’s people from their God, seeking to separate what God has joined together.

In the first proclamation of the gospel, the proclamation of God himself, the antithesis is the gospel. The gospel is the gospel of enmity. Compromise is impossible. Alliance with the seed of the serpent is impossible. There is and must remain only enmity, the enmity created and maintained by sovereign grace alone. The mother promise of the gospel is the war declaration of enmity, spoken directly to the enemy himself.

But the enmity of the mother promise brings its power to another, much deeper realm. The promise results in enmity within the members of the party of the living God. Redeemed by grace into covenant fellowship with their God, the seed of the woman find that enmity runs within. The covenant people of God find within themselves deep opposition to their God. The motions of the seed of the serpent characterize not only the seed of the serpent, but also what the seed of the woman find within themselves.

What the people of God have within them is in alliance with the seed of the serpent. They have the flesh, the old man of sin, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life. They have within them their depravity, the depravity that makes common cause with the serpent’s seed. The seed of the woman are characterized by the struggle described so fitly in Galatians 5:17: “For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other: so that ye cannot do the things that ye would.”

Because of this enmity within, the people of God must take up arms against themselves. That enmity means their calling to put to death their members that are of the flesh. They are called to put off the old man for the sake of putting on the new. The people of God are called to repentance and out of that repentance to true conversion, putting off the old man with his deeds and putting on the new man in Christ Jesus.

By the promise of Genesis 3:15, the covenant people of God are placed in the unrelenting, constant antithetical stand against the seed of the serpent. From the viewpoint of the antithesis existing in all history, that stand appears so very small and weak, to the point of being helpless. The outward viewpoint of that antithesis has the whole world (1 John 5:19) pitted against the remnant according to the election of grace (Rom. 11:5). The inward viewpoint of that same antithesis has the members of that remnant deeply involved in another conflict, having only a small beginning of the new obedience, a beginning so small that they cannot do the things that they would.

The above character of the antithesis makes prominent and powerful the mother promise of God in the hearts of his people. In all their warfare they are assured both of their survival and of their conquest. Their God is faithful who has promised. His faithfulness is clear against the bitter and shameful backdrop of their unfaithfulness, woefully exhibited in their first parents. There will always be enmity because their God has promised it. There will always be enmity because their God has promised to place it there, between them and the seed of the serpent. Their small corner from which they fight must always exist because God has promised. Their small numbers cannot be overcome because the enmity that is their strength to fight is from God’s faithfulness to his promise. No matter how small their beginning of new obedience, it cannot be snuffed out, because it is God’s performance of his word.

Their present assurance in the conflict of enmity is rooted in the promise of ultimate victory. Yes, their corner from which they fight is so very small. Their numbers are so very small in the face of their enemy, the seed of the serpent. Their beginning is also so very small. But they must be victorious because of the promise of their God, of whom they are members. They are, after all, the seed of the woman, the children of promise.

Their victory is sealed in this promise because the very God who created all things by himself is the God who has promised. All the seed of the serpent is under his sovereign government, so completely that without his will they cannot so much as move. The God who promised will bring, by his glorious power, his promised enmity to its glorious conclusion in the final judgment of the seed of the serpent (Rev. 20:10–15). The victory is sealed because of the promise that the seed of the woman will bruise the head of the serpent. That seal becomes apparent in the history of the seed of the woman as that seed feels the power of the serpent whenever its heel is bruised. As much as that heel-bruising is part of the mother promise of God, so must it lead to the promise of victory: the head of the serpent must be crushed in final victory.

But most of all, that victory is sealed because of the one seed of the woman, the one whom this mother promise concerns first of all, the enmity of God in his natural and eternal seed, the only begotten Son. The Son of God, to be begotten by a woman and born under the law in the fullness of time, is the promised seed of the woman (Rev. 12). That seed is the savior and the judge. The bruising of his heel at the cross is the salvation of his people and the crushing of the serpent’s head. The victory of Christ’s cross he will fully realize when he executes the judgment of God against the nations, ruling them with the rod of iron.

In that antithetical mother promise of enmity and victory is the power of God’s covenant people to represent victoriously the cause of their God in this world of darkness and sin.